AI for a more inclusive language
Hi,
My name is Sara Forni, AI Product Manager at Atex, and this is MyType, a newsletter dedicated to journalism, innovation and artificial intelligence.
Every fortnight we will explore a topic related to this evolving field to discover the pleasure to do journalism without repeating boring tasks and using technology as a helper, not a substitute. That's what we like to call ‘digital joynalism’.
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Now, let's get started!
AI for a more inclusive language
After days of research, hours of phone calls and interviews around town you are finally ready to publish your article. You feel like you have checked everything; yet you might get a notification reminding you that “in this article there are eight men's names and only two women’s”. Or “out of ten photos in the gallery, only two represent female faces”. If this happens, it is very likely that your editorial team has implemented FT Diversify, a new AI-powered tool that helps publishers create balanced and inclusive content to increase audience engagement and unlock new commercial opportunities.
The aim of Financial Times Strategies, which presented this tool at Press Gazette's Future of Media Technology conference last week, is to provide a tool for publishers review whether content is inclusive of under-represented audiences. Having this tool will allow newsrooms to increase their 'gender' audience by attracting females, using more inclusive language, and promoting engaging topics and formats.
FT Diversify analyses contents for hidden, unconscious prejudices using clever algorithms and machine learning, assisting in the creation of fair and inclusive content.
It offers practical information on how people are interacting with your content and makes recommendations for boosting reach and engagement.
FT Diversify will be available soon, but at the London event, many insiders held up their phones to frame the QR Code that allows them to sign up for the tool's waiting list. Interest was certainly high.
Pitfalls are inevitable, but this is a starting point
The tool analyses text and images to discover whether men and women are being represented equally — a laudable aim, but grey areas remain. For example, how will male actors be classified if they wear a wig or a long dress for entertainment purposes?
This development made me think about how important it is to always remember to think out of the box, especially when approaching the field of artificial intelligence, where there is so much competition. For 100 people who will ask you to provide top-quality summaries, there will always be more complex and elaborate use cases - like FT Diversity - to reason about. And reasoning will not be enough, continuous testing and reiteration will be necessary to achieve an optimal result.
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Using AI as an assistant
We at Atex also spoke about our approach to artificial intelligence on stage at the conference organised by Press Gazette, of which we were sponsors. Cesare Navarotto, our Chief Product Officer, told during the “Newsroom productivity - can technology help you do more with less?” session, how we will transform our CMS by integrating artificial intelligence tools.
Journalists are already using AI-powered tools in a pervasive way: just think of tools for transcription of videos and audios, or translation services, or generative tools such as ChatGPT used for example for quickly producing articles drafts or summaries.
Microsoft Office, to mention just one, is already incorporating an AI-powered digital assistant and they are constantly releasing new features: editors will expect at least the same level of functionality from their CMSs.
Yes, but how?
In our opinion vendors like us can make the difference in the following ways:
• Product integration: we can directly enhance our products with AI-powered features so that editors won’t need to access external tools to get the help they need.
• One stop shop: we take care of selecting and integrating the best AI providers for each use case, potentially replacing them behind the scenes in a completely transparent way. Services/add-ons would be activated on top of our existing contracts, no need for the publisher to select and certify a new vendor.
• Access to publisher’s data: this is probably the most important point. With the publishers’ consent, we can use the content archive in the CMS to fine tune the AI model using prompt engineering techniques so that it generates content in line with the style of the publisher.
And what do you think? If you are interested in our developments, please contact us to find out more.
Stories & Tools
Six media events to attend in the autumn of 2023
An incredible (and very simple) article from Financial Times shows how Generative AI works
Some tips from the author of AP guidelines on how to cover AI
AI Startup Midjourney Expects $200 Million in Revenue
That's all for today!
There would be no 'digital joynalism' without sharing. We don't want this channel to be a one-way street. So for any ideas, suggestions and thoughts on the subject, don't hesitate to email me at sforni@atex.com!
Have a good weekend,
Sara